Episode summary: Garden Utopias: Michael Gilson, Associate Fellow of the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, takes Laurie Taylor behind the privet hedge, to explore the suburban garden and the beautification of Britain. How did millions of British people develop an obsession...

Episode summary: As we get ready to launch our Season 7, a bonus episode from another podcast we think our listeners will want to hear: Long Shadow. Episode 1 of its newest season, In Guns We Trust, with host Garrett Graff.Mass shootings have plagued the U.S. for generations. But in 1999, when shots...

Episode summary: Roman talks to Jake Berman, author of “The Lost Subways of North America.”

Episode summary: Ed Mitchell’s name has come to be synonymous with Eastern North Carolina wood-smoked whole-hog barbecue. From Wilson, North Carolina, he grew up smoking hogs and has tried to continue that tradition, using old techniques and traditionally farm-raised pigs. But almost since the start...

Episode summary: Cyrus McCormick invented the revolutionary mechanical reaper in 1831…right? At least, that’s how the story has been told for decades. In Harvesting History: McCormick’s Reaper, Heritage Branding, and Historical Forgery (U Nebraska Press, 2023), National Park Service historian Daniel...

Episode summary: Episodio 61: Ma quando nasce la cucina italiana? (Stagione 4)

Episode summary: Where’s my jetpack?

Episode summary: Why We Need Small Talk from The Art of Small Talk

Seriously? I listened to this because it popped up in the middle of a walk and wasn’t too long and so I didn’t bother cleaning up, but oh my. That’s one audiobook I will not be listening to in full.

Episode summary: For the latest episode in our series about the hold of bad ideas, we welcome back the geneticist Adam Rutherford to talk about Linnaean taxonomy, a seemingly innocuous scheme of classification that has had deeply pernicious consequences. From scientific racism to social stratificati...

Episode summary: How much does what you choose to eat come from what social class you were born into, or identify with now? In this episode, Sheila Dillon takes on the often uncomfortable conversation about social class in the UK, British people’s obsession with it, and what it’s doing to our health...